


the names that make us

by mavnificent



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Anxiety, Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, It's Bren/Lucien before it's Caleb/Molly so please join me on this journey, Nonbinary Mollymauk Tealeaf, Other, Racism, Secret Relationship, Soulmates, Torture, Trans Caleb Widogast
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:55:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22962031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mavnificent/pseuds/mavnificent
Summary: Bren Aldric Ermendrud is seventeen years old when his soulmate's name appears on his arm. Lucien hurtles into his life, bright as a shooting star, but he's a little too late: Bren's destiny is already burning down around him.He's twenty-nine when that name becomes a ghostly-white inkblot barely discernible from the rest of his scars...and as far as he can tell—as far as he's ever read, in any case—that can only mean death.Unsurprising. Fate has never been kind.So what is fate playing at when he crosses paths with his soulmate again? And what good is a soulmate to a man on the run?
Relationships: Bren Aldric Ermendrud/Lucien, Mollymauk Tealeaf/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 31
Kudos: 143





	1. lights that burn

Bren Aldric Ermendrud is seventeen years old when he first meets his soulmate, but as luck would have it he’s too busy writhing in the throes of teenaged ennui to make sense of what’s happening.

No, instead he’s focused on Master Ikithon’s right shoulder and the delicate threading of his silken robes, gaze anchored to appear unwavering and at attention when he’s really anything but. 

“Sometimes,” Master Ikithon is saying, low and sonorous. “It is better to have others do the work for you. Like using”—and here he untucks an arm from behind his back to bring his fore and thumb together once, twice, again—“tweezers. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master Ikithon,” both Eodwulf and Astrid chorus. 

_Cute,_ Bren thinks bitterly.

There is a rustle of fabric as their teacher turns to glance at him. “Bren?”

“Yes,” Bren murmurs on an exhalation. He falls back into himself, sand through an hourglass. “Master Ikithon.”

Astrid looks at him sidelong and widens her eyes. He quirks a brow that says nothing about the miserable, coiling animal in his gut that looking at her inspires. Bren knows that they are the hand on the grasping pincer. See? He was paying attention. He isn’t thinking about the name etched below the delicate crease of her elbow, the name that isn’t his. 

Wulf is a stone-still profile on his other side, and the proud tilt of his head spurs that coiling thing to wilt. He tears his gaze away.

A good thing, too, as the dark, high doors to the library finally open. 

“Look,” Astrid whispers to him from the corner of her mouth, like they’re okay, like she hadn’t dropped his glass heart to the floor days prior. There’s amusement coloring her voice at his expense. “A _cat._ ” 

And it _is_ a cat. A tabaxi, rather, and he’s never seen one before. Only as woodcuts in books he’s read, crouched and menacing, teeth bared in a hiss. 

This one is short and lean, fur glossy and black as the ink he uses to transcribe. Even her cloak is not nearly as black as she is, though when the enchanted torchlight strikes her, he notices rosettes blacker still around her temples, cheeks, throat. Her eyes are a living, molten gold, and the thick carpets swallow up the sound of her footfalls. 

Her pinstripe pupils blow wide when she catches him staring. Bone white talons flex at her sides. In threat, maybe, but he can’t help but think of his mother’s barn cat and the way he would knead her skirts, the alarm on his furry little face when his claws would inevitably catch in the heavy felt. Stifled laughter tenses his belly.

“Nonagon,” Master Ikithon greets, tone bland. He hides his disgust for a creature like a tabaxi very well. “You’re late.” 

“No one told me I’d be in the company of such _flagrant_ racists,” comes the cool reply. Bren peels his attention away from the tabaxi’s tail peeking out from underneath the edge of her cloak, and leans out from behind Master Ikithon. She is not, apparently, Nonagon. “Not you, of course. M’glad I dragged Otis here along. Your Empire dogs wouldn’t have let me through otherwise!”

He—they? Bren isn’t sure, their voice is pleasant, smooth, but their face is puzzling and timeless—is tall and lithe with curling horns on a shorn head. There is skin, a lot of it, revealed at the edges of a widely cut, black blouse, violet as the sky had been when Astrid told him her mark had appeared, sleeve rucked up to show him Eodwulf’s name. He’s never seen a tiefling in person, or a tabaxi, or so much skin on display when a person isn’t naked for that matter _,_ and now there’s one of each and so much to look at; it’s overwhelming. 

There is also a half-elf man—Otis, he presumes—on the other side of the tiefling, older, long haired and sallow-skinned, wearing a haunted expression, but Bren has seen and knows plenty of half-elves, has seen that look on many faces. The tiefling’s tail whisks through the air, playful almost. He thinks of his mother’s cat again, but the urge to laugh doesn’t return.

“I thought you were more in number,” Master Ikithon continues, ignoring the other’s words. There’s a rasp of sound; his calloused palm strokes over his patchy stubble. He does this when he’s trying to tempt annoyance by appearing dissatisfied. It used to work on Bren so well.

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of bringing all my people.” Wide sleeves flutter as arms are spread. Their forearms are strong. There are curved swords in pretty, glittering sheathes hitched against the tiefling’s narrow hips. Bren’s ears redden. “That’s a soiree. I figured this was more of an interest group meeting. Little more intimate, that.”

Carmine eyes meet blue across the room. Something in Bren’s stomach tilts, pulse plummeting into his gut, only to rocket back up. Bren’s never seen a red like this before, denser than the color of fire, closer to fresh blood. They are outlined, emphasized, with thick black lines. 

All of their teeth are pointed and very, very white. 

Bren starts and looks away first.

“Let’s not waste any more time,” Master Ikithon says with a half-turn towards the heavy oaken desk strewn with papers. Maybe he doesn’t notice the strange energy the tiefling brings, or the way it crackles off the skin like arcing bolts of lightning. It’s possible he doesn’t care. Easily expendable, probably. 

When the tiefling, _Nonagon,_ moves through Bren’s periphery, graceful as a silk ribbon, his focus narrows to a single point. His fingers twitch and curl. He desperately wants to cross his arms, scratch scratch _scratch_ at the prickling below the delicate crease of his left elbow _,_ press flat the fine, prickling hairs standing at attention on his forearms. 

He doesn’t, but only just.

*

“ _Nonagon._ What does that even mean?" 

The name punches out of Astrid as she falls back onto her bed, slippered feet kicking up into the air. She tap-taps her heels together, then drops them to the floor and toes off her shoes. They’re sequestered in their dormitory, the three of them, Wulf perched on the end of Astrid’s bed. It is—Bren stares through the high-paned window and the moons—half past eleven. The meeting had gone on far longer than any of them had anticipated. 

"It's a nine-sided figure," Bren murmurs. 

Astrid’s arm flaps out, catching Wulf’s thigh. “Do you think,” she says, brimming with excitement and meeting Bren’s eyes. “His tabaxi purrs?"

Wulf snorts and pinches the back of her hand. 

“I couldn’t stop picturing her making biscuits,” Bren deadpans, and the both of them burst out laughing. For a moment, it almost feels normal. But only a moment, because when Astrid’s laughter fades her attention slides to Eodwulf to hold it for an intimately long moment. 

_We can still be the three of us,_ Wulf had said, gripping his fingers tight. His desperation had almost made Bren feel included. It had always been the three of them. 

_Soulmate marks, sometimes they come in threes,_ he’d pushed on, looking to Astrid for confirmation.

She’d nodded, _I’ve heard of a story like that._

 _But yours didn’t,_ he pointed out to them. He wanted to believe them. He wanted to hold out hope, but instead he’d held out his arms for them to look. Save for the puncture scars they all shared, and the burn marks like florets, his were bare of either of their names. Astrid’s hand covered Wulf’s name where it was etched, a new habit she’d developed, hours old. 

Bren checked his body later, searched with a hand mirror, just in case, though he’d known there would be nothing to find—he’d have _felt_ it, the exact way Astrid had explained her own. Hope was a fragile thing.

“He was pretty,” Wulf says thoughtfully after a moment. He leans back on the heels of his hands. 

“The half-elf? What was his name?” 

“Otis,” Bren supplies softly.

“ _Otis_ ,” she echoes, like she’s filing the information away. He knows she’ll forget it. She forgets things that ultimately don’t matter.

Wulf snorts, “ _No,_ not Otis. The other one. Nonagon. For a devil.”

Astrid hums. “I guess he was. What do you think, Bren?”

“I—” 

Bren pauses to tuck his head forward. He thinks of those bright red eyes, meeting his again and again from across the table. Fleeting glances like the flash of some pretty bauble catching the light that made it difficult to concentrate on the task at hand. 

“I guess,” he finishes lamely. He digs a blunt nail into the wooden post of her bed, bulls on, “Never thought Master Ikithon would work with a group like theirs.”

“It won’t be for long,” Wulf says matter-of-factly. It’s what all of them are thinking, he simply wanted confirmation. “They’re as good as used parchment now.” 

Bren stares out at the moons through the window. It’s almost a shame. 

“The _Tomb Takers_. We need a name like that,” he jokes, casting his gaze back to the pair. 

Wulf’s grin is bright, happy. It makes him feel bright and happy, too.

“Trent’s Trio?” he offers. Bren snorts. 

Astrid wrinkles her nose. “I hate alliteration. It needs to be intimidating!” 

“Mmh, Trent’s a very intimidating man.” Saying his first name aloud almost seems taboo, which is why they only ever say it in hushed voices when it’s just the three of them. 

“Cell of the Archmagician,” Wulf tries again in his spookiest voice. 

“Oh _no,_ ” Astrid giggles. “ _Worse!_ Something with a color. Like the Golden...the Golden….”

“Showers?”

Astrid gasps and hurls a pillow at Wulf, who topples over laughing. “Don’t be gross!”

“How is that _gross?_ It’s bound to be _someone_ ’s something!” 

Wulf is beaming, and Astrid’s cheeks are rosy red, as if the three of them hadn’t gotten up to similarly worse in the alcoves of the Academy. Still, Bren suddenly feels as though he’s on the outside looking in. Hasn’t he always been, though, as Master Ikithon’s favorite? His hope for the future of the Empire? There is a bubble forming like a spell around Astrid and Eodwulf. He thinks of Wulf’s hands squeezing his, of Astrid’s lips on his cheek, the corner of his mouth. It feels ages ago already when it’s only been a handful of days.

_We can still be the three of us._

But he knows what they say: two’s company, three’s a crowd. Bren excuses himself with a murmured word, and tells himself he isn’t disappointed that neither call after him when he walks away.

*

The halls of this wing of the Academy are quiet and Bren’s footsteps, trained as he was with a switch lashed against his calves to punish his noise, is quieter still. He follows the points of the herringbone wood, toes ghosting over the spots he knows squeak, into the faint, globular reflections of enchanted torchlight glinting on the worn floors. He isn’t trying to sneak, but focusing on these small things—avoiding an over-stained plank of bloodwood pointing left that creaks, ghosting the arch of his slippered foot over the head of a nail that juts up enough to catch—keeps him from thinking about other things. 

_Nothing will change,_ Astrid said. 

He digs his nails into his wrists, drags them up. Sleeves keep him from leaving marks behind. Nothing will change, but the scales have already tipped out of his favor. 

It doesn’t take much, really.

He isn’t delusional. Something like this was bound to happen. It never stopped hope from sinking her claws every time Wulf curved a broad hand against his cheek, when Astrid would drop into his lap and loop her arms around his neck, when it was the three of them, curled up together on a single, narrow bed. His heart is frantic to be a part of a different kind of magic and now he feels prickly-hot, stomach a pit of writhing vipers. Bren turns the corner and drops his arms with a start.

Nonagon lingers with the other two, Otis and the tabaxi, down the hall. The tabaxi gestures and Nonagon looks up with an unreadable expression; Bren un-sticks his tongue from the roof of his mouth.

“Where is Master Ikithon?” he asks, with so much buckram he could kick himself.

“He told us to show ourselves out.” Nonagon cocks his head, “Well, he told my companions to”—he waves his hand, wiggles his fingers—“ _get lost_ , but I was given permission to stay behind for, what did the man say?”

He turns to Otis, who nods and murmurs in a quiet brogue, “Thirty minutes, no more, no less.”

“ _Thirty!_ Minutes in the library.” 

His eyes narrow. Nonagon’s smile pulls.

“And Master Ikithon?” Bren presses.

The tiefling’s shoulders bob up dispassionately. “Bed, my guess. Soon, anyway. Assume he’s like most old men - early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and incomprehensibly _boring_. He kept us over after running you and your friends off."

Bren’s lips press together. It sounds like horseshit, but that may be because of Nonagon’s smirking mouth, the amusement in his glittering stare. There is no way these three could overpower Master Ikithon, so it must be the truth. Still, they mustn’t have any pride if the Tomb Takers are seen as this little threat to the Academy, to the Assembly, to an archmage like his teacher—they should be insulted.

“Then see yourselves out,” he says stiffly.

The tabaxi shifts towards Nonagon, her twitching whiskers the only indication that she’s speaking. A purple hand curves against her furry cheek, and Bren is surprised to read consternation in her expression. 

“Fine,” is all he hears her bite off. Her tail flicks back and forth and she nods to Otis, who falls into step beside her as they make their way towards Bren. Non-threateningly, disengaged, he notes, though her gaze flashes, pupils blots of ink aimed at him as they pass. He waits until their presence disappears from the hall.

And then it’s just him and Nonagon, who is still smiling. 

“Well,” Bren fumbles. He half-turns, knowing full well he’s only _pretend_ -leaving. Won’t be the first time he’s lingered outside the library. “Thirty minutes.”

“Will you help me?” Bren startles, freezes. Nonagon continues with a bare, genuine earnestness, “In the library? Thought I’d have two extra pairs of eyes and way more notes on your master’s part.” 

Bren waffles. There is a stillness to Nonagon’s eyes in spite of his smiling mouth, and the mystery of that by itself is nearly enticing enough. It’s time in the library alone with a _tiefling_ that seals the deal. Curiosity killed the cat.

 _But satisfaction brought it back,_ Bren thinks absently. It’s better this way, he reasons. Master Ikithon would want an additional precaution, and with graduation so near he’s on the cusp of being on the field anyway—if he can achieve his better graces, he may as well. If not, then...there’s really no punishment he hasn’t faced before. Trent Ikithon likes to tell him that he’s a _good_ student, not a _perfect_ one.

“What are you looking for?” he asks, shrinking the space between them in several long strides. With the other two gone and a directive in mind, it’s easy to wear a mantle of confidence. Nonagon’s tail whisks and curls as he turns towards the double doors, giving Bren his back. 

Interesting. 

Also interesting is the large panel of fabric missing from the back of his blouse that Bren hadn’t noticed earlier, kept from falling by delicate ropes of argent chain running like harp strings from one side to the other. Up close, silver-light scars are threaded with a methodical precision across his smooth skin, some faded, some fresh over the jutting wings of his shoulder blades, the corded muscles underneath, the straight line of his spine leading to the laces above the knobs of his tail—

“Would you believe me,” Nonagon begins and Bren shakes off his stupor. “If I said I’m in a library looking for information about another library with another book?”

Bren hums. 

“More ridiculous things have happened,” is his only reply. He casts about the stacks and breathes in deeply—old glue and vellum, dry wood and staunched rot. He hones in on the fresh prickle of familiar magic wafting through the air, netting the parameter of the room. A barrier, much like his thread, _timing_ Nonagon the way it had Bren and Astrid and Eodwulf during their exams. “Why a book for a book?”

“Why not?” Nonagon returns. Bren fixes him with an unimpressed look and the tiefling’s lips curl into a close-lipped smile. He smiles far too much.

“Fair enough,” Bren grouses. “The more information you give me, though, the easier it will be to find what you are looking for.”

“It’s a ruin now,” Nonagon says, arms resting akimbo. “Maybe an old wives’ tale. Bit old, but post-Calamity.”

So architecture or fiction. With only a half hour at their disposal, they can't do both, but Nonagon is in luck. Bren beckons him to follow with a crooked finger as he beelines for the lower stacks. 

“Mmh, you can find a lot of information in storybooks, you know," he says almost to himself, memory guiding him towards books he hasn’t touched, let alone thought of, for an age. “Folktales, things of that nature. Harmless, but informative.”

Bren bends down to trace over worn and gilded spines, pulling a wyvern-skin book with deckled pages free and setting it atop the shelf. It’s a collection he hasn’t read in a while, all folktales gathered from shrinking farming communities, more anthropological than sentimental. He thinks of his mother and sets it aside, tapping it with a blunt finger. He doesn’t look up as he moves on.

“This isn’t my first choice, but start here while I look for the other,” he says.

“Sounds like you know everything in here,” Nonagon hums, sliding the book from the shelf. He turns it over in his hands.

“I do.” Bren tugs another free, “I’ve read every book in this library.” 

There’s silence, then the sound of a book cracking open, pages slowly turning in whispers. “That’s impressive.”

It is, again, surprisingly genuine.

“Not really,” Bren demures, hands stilling against the sheafs of a delicate folio stuffed between two large tomes. “Anyone can read.”

“Have your _friends_ read this entire library?” 

He thinks of Wulf, pulling him away from his books to go sneaking into the armory to play with magical artifacts. Astrid begging him to dance instead of read, whirling him around and around the common room until his ankles wobbled. Every stolen moment was worth it to see the delight on their faces. They are all of them studious, but Astrid often said ( _while fussing with his collar, plucking the corners, laying it flat_ ) that he overdid it. Bren’s gaze darts to Nonagon, then back into the stacks. 

There is smug laughter in the tiefling’s voice when he says, “I didn’t think so.” 

It’s strange—he isn’t being _mocked._ There’s something akin to pride in Nonagon’s voice if anything, but over what, Bren hasn’t a clue. He occasionally hears something similar in between Master Ikithon’s criticisms, but not so blatant, and his criticisms certainly don’t make him blush with anything other than shame _._

No, there’s a warm bloom of pleasure unfurling in his chest, which is...ridiculous. They’ve only just met.

In his periphery, Nonagon isn’t looking at the book in his hands. He’s turning the pages with a calculated stillness, but his attention is fixed and burning. Bren can _feel_ it, the way he can feel the flame of a lit matchstick as it trails too close to his skin. The cover falls closed as Nonagon strides to him, a purposeful weight to his footsteps when prior they’d been silent. There’s no _threat_ in his gait, but Bren feels hunted all the same, the hair on the back of his neck fanning up in anticipation.

No. No, not anticipation, _alarm._

Nothing in Nonagon’s stance is _coiled,_ but when he stops he’s entirely too close. He is a line of heat. 

_What if Nonagon wasn’t hired for Master Ikithon, but hired to_ test _them? He’s already failed._

The edge of the book thumps against Bren’s chest. 

“Speaking of reading, I can’t read this,” Nonagon says. 

The magic he’s pulled from the ether, the magic that races up his arms in crackling arcs, fizzles out. Bren blinks, “Why...why not?”

Nonagon, unperturbed, digs his thumb into the pages and flips the book open, tilts his chin towards it. “It’s not in Common.”

Bren refuses to look down. He was trained better. Adrenaline flints against an unwelcome excitement and he can’t peel the two apart. His voice is breathy _,_ “A spell can fix that.”

Nonagon lifts a perfectly shaped eyebrow. 

“Do I look like I do your kind of magic--hmm….” He trails off, tilts his head, a practiced movement. “I never caught your name.”

From this nearness Bren can see how soft his cupid’s bow is. He colors and leans back out of his space. “I never gave it.”

The laugh that gets him is a sharp crow’s cackle, somehow sounding mocking without _being_ mocking. “Guess you didn’t!” 

Nonagon smells like winter woodsmoke. Like iron. Like bedwarm heat. Bren's fingers dance across the book spines to make pretend that he’s preoccupied with anything but the tiefling before him. Nothing occupies his attention more. 

“It is Bren,” he relents quietly, finally turning away to gather the materials he’s pulled. His smile is so small it could be a secret between the two of them. He tells himself he’s playing coy, that this is no different than one of the assignments Master Ikithon sends him and Wulf and Astrid on. 

Suits the situation as well as a round peg in a square hole.

“Bren. Bren, Bren, Bren. So good to put a face to the name. Well, you already know mine,” Nonagon says, tail wafting as he follows Bren to one of the work tables. He snaps the book shut again and waggles it. Bren begins skimming the pages of another tome for the fable about an enchanted library. “You’ll have to read it to me.”

He looks up sharply. “...Was?” 

Nonagon plants a hand on the table, fingers splayed wide (long and lovely, claws bruise black and exhilarating), and pushes the book forward with a slow scrape. His crescent moon eyes glitter under the light and Bren is stricken with how _alien_ he is all of a sudden, eyes solid and red, horns black—no, slate gray—and glossy, ears more pointed than the half-elf Otis’s. One of his canines is crooked, just a little, just enough to be charming and Bren’s stupid heart gives a wild, animal flutter. 

He absently rubs the inside of his sleeved elbow. Nonagon follows the movement, tail curling.

“Okay,” Bren says eventually, stupidly, when there’s no follow up. “Ahh. Only...only today. I will. Mmh, I will tell you what--what it says. I can copy a translation for you later.” 

Nonagon rounds the table and Bren’s heart thrums in his ears. 

“Sounds good, Bren. Now,” he begins, dragging out a chair and dropping into it with a dangerous grace. His long legs stretch out to prop against the seat opposite him. “Tell me something new.” 

So, with little fanfare, Bren does, and as the fates would have it he doesn’t think of Astrid or Wulf or soulmate marks once.

*

Water soaks his hair copper, plasters it in loose waves against his temples and cheeks and drips across his narrow shoulders. Early morning ablutions are always nicest when he’s by himself. He doesn't mind sharing the washroom, but there's less distraction with Wulf throwing himself into early training exercises and Astrid sleeping in. Bren can entertain his waking thoughts in peace, doesn't have to explain to anyone why they keep drifting, not even to himself when they veer to tieflings and their watchful, steady gazes, or their curling, secretive mouths. 

The Academy doesn't sleep, but it is sleepy, quiet, velvet blue sunlight slanting in through the deep embrasures in the stone around him. He dunks his bucket again, tips his chin up to splash his face.

There is a name on his forearm. 

Bren drops the pail with a clang and a startled inhalation. 

_There is a name on his forearm_. 

" _Astrid!_ "

He moves with a kind of clumsiness that hasn’t ailed him since he grew into his limbs, sliding against the polished wood, hose flopping where it is loosely hung from his right foot. He looks foolish and would have died on the spot if Master Ikithon had seen him. 

Trent Ikithon isn’t even a leaf on the sudden and devastating storm of his mind, however. 

“Astrid!” he calls again, clumsily pulling at the worn metal of her doorknob. He hisses and yanks his hand back, runes glowing beneath his fingers before dulling into barely visible lines against the metal. He sulks, cradling his hand against his chest as he raps at the door with the other. “Astrid, let me in!”

The footsteps on the other side are uncommonly loud with obvious displeasure before the door cracks open, one sleep-crusted eye peeking out at him in a squint.

“Today is my day, Bren,” Astrid gripes, but one look at his ghost-white face is apparently enough for her annoyance to dissolve, quick as candyfloss. She swings the door wide and it takes little more than that for him to flee the hallway. This isn't a conversation he wants on the lips of every student and worker that roams the halls. He leans hard against the wall.

“What’s happened?” she asks once the door is shut and locked behind them. He sucks in a breath, body tense even after the door brings security and silence.

“I….” he starts, voice petering off. Instead of finishing, he holds up his arm, laying bare the letters curling over a set of neat surgical scars to spell out the name LUCIEN, whiter than his scar tissue. Astrid’s eyes widen. She snatches his wrist and stretches his arm out for a better look. 

“I- I- I- ah, _shit._ ” He draws his hand down his face, scrubbing at his mouth. “The cat, Astrid!”

“The cat? Nonagon, Otis, and….” Astrid gasps, immediately tucking her lips in and covering her mouth with the tips of her fingers for good measure. Bren knows when she’s about to cave to a fit of laughter, her cheeks going rosy while misery settles into his chest, sloughs into the pit of his stomach. 

“It’s not funny, Astrid.” It isn’t a whine. It _isn’t._

She _tries_ to school her features for his sake. At least he thinks she does.

“You’re absolutely right. Not funny in the _least_.” They were mirror reflections of one another almost nearly, hands braced against their mouths, the only difference being Astrid’s eyes, crinkled up to smother her giggles.

“Did you see the way she looked at me?” His fingers drop from his face down to his collarbone to stretch wide against his neck. “It wasn’t with _any_ form of approval.”

“Could you actually tell, Bren? I mean, really, cats are hard to read whether they’re running around on fours or twos.”

He thinks back to his mother's cat, ruddy and spotted in a way that let him blend effortlessly into their wheat fields. Frumpkin would scrunch his nose, ears flicking back whenever Bren would make too loud a noise, or place the freshly dried jerky out of his reach. 

"I could tell," he murmurs, thumb still worrying at the indent of his clavicle.

Her lips twitch. “She’s probably not too thrilled to be stuck with someone so _hairless_.” 

He glowers. This isn’t fair. He hadn’t even _felt_ it. 

_Wulf looked at me and I just. I knew. Like a, a...string. A string in the center of my chest, drawing me to him._ Astrid touched her fingers to her sternum, lashes fanning across the apples of her cheeks as she closed her eyes to recall the moment. _I let it happen and it...happened._

Perhaps his own jealousy had muffled the experience. He always thought it would appear with a spate of euphoria, that it would cut through whatever pain of his existence he’d be nursing with a gasp of delight, but when he thinks of Lucien as she arrived, cautious and tense, there was nothing save his own clinical curiosity. Was he wrong to want the stories his mother and father used to tell him at bedtime? 

" _Lucien_ ," Astrid breathes. "What a name."

"Mmh. Like light." 

"Maybe because her fur eats it all up," she adds, and Bren huffs.

"My soulmate has an ironic name. They _would_ ," he says miserably. 

Astrid is silent for a time, Wulf’s name safe beneath her palm and the sleeve of her dressing gown. Bren touches his own.

“You can’t let Master Ikithon see.” 

The good humor lingering between them pops like a champagne bubble. 

He isn't sure what his face says in that moment: surprise, disgust, unbridled fear. Whatever it is, Astrid meets it with a level, unblinking intensity. He swallows down the well of emotions, the anxiety that itches his fingers. He scratches at the name, but can’t bear to look at it. "I wasn't planning on it. He...he doesn't need to know everything."

“Good,” she says swiftly, primly. “He really doesn’t! What would he even know about them, anyway?” 

_Everything_ goes unspoken. 

Astrid laughs, small and tittering, nervous enough at the edges that she cuts herself off with a childish hum to make up for it. She busily fluffs the shapeless skirt of her gown as she leans against her bed. They’re allowed their small defiances—they _need_ them. Still, anxiety churns in his stomach. She bites her lip. They say nothing of Trent.

“Are you worried? You know...she doesn’t _have_ to be your soulmate. I don’t see why you can’t just”—a quick shrug—“ _ignore_ it.”

Bren squares his jaw. "I don’t want to. I'm….” 

He lifts his hand up to sustain her silence. They’d heard dozens of stories about people coming together because of those indelible marks, but not a single one about them being _ignored_ and terror—disappointment—aside he doesn’t _want_ to ignore it _._ Bren inhales slowly. Sometimes his thoughts raced too quickly for his tongue to follow, led on the noose of his nerves. He lowers his hand to his chest, focusing on the beat of his heart and the feeling of his own breath for a few long moments before it all falls into place. 

"I’ve felt—no offense—I've felt I've been wearing out my welcome for awhile now." He smiles at Astrid. She has beautiful, bright brilliant eyes and a stubbornness that would get her far. She used to set his heart racing but now it stoked a warm fondness in his chest. He doesn’t want that feeling to bank, truly, but it was only a matter of time before his bitterness or his clinginess broke the foundation their friendship was built on. He needs them.

He always has. 

No, this was a good thing, no matter how terrifying the prospect of Trent discovering them was. He’d been trained for this by the man himself, had been taught to keep quiet, to never give an inch. Who can fight fate, anyway? Especially if it exists the way it does in the stories. He takes one last breath, steeling his nerves, and chases out the last of his anxiety. 

"You know you could never," Astrid says softly. 

"I think this is for the best. You know I love a good challenge, ya?" He smiles, shows a little teeth as he falls more fully into his surety, "Besides, I wonder if tabaxi also take well to cream."

“Oh, I’m sure she will,” she giggles, brows wiggling. She relaxes with the appearance of Bren’s smile. Her hand alights against the cool wood of her bedpost, gaze lowering and going soft with dreaminess. “It’s nice, though, isn’t it? Looking at someone and knowing suddenly. Feeling it. ...I’m happy you get to have that too, Bren.”

“It’s a little unnerving, honestly,” he admits around a fading smile. He rubs the mark on his forearm before he notices the loose hose hanging from his foot. “Shit, I’m a complete mess.” 

“You do look ridiculous,” Astrid snickers. He pulls at the waist until the leg pops up to his ankle and ties the laces.

“I’m- I’m really excited, though. Getting to sneak around.” 

“Sneaking around is half the fun. Almost as exciting as one of your books! You're practically star-crossed.” She settles in front of him and begins to roughly pluck and straighten his clothes here and there, more perfunctory than meaningful. She stops abruptly, laughter cresting. “Never mind Master Ikithon, when Wulf learns that it’s the tabaxi….”

Bren groans, head tipping back so dramatically it thumps against the wall. 

"I almost prefer Master Ikithon finding out." His nose wrinkles as he tilts his chin forward, damp bangs falling just shy of his eyes. "How long do you think we can hide it from him? We... _are_ going to hide it from him, right?" 

He reaches up to straighten the collar of his shirt and eyes her suspiciously. She takes _far_ too long to answer, which, perhaps, isn’t long by any standard measure, but for Astrid? It’s nearly an eternity. 

" _Astrid._ "

“Of course we are,” she quips with practiced ease. Satisfied, she smooths her palms across his shoulders with a definitive pat, then abandons him for her trunk. “My lips are sealed.”

"Of course," he echoes, voice heavy with doubt. 

The doubt is well placed. 

Bren makes it to noon without incident. He’s in the midst of a transcription when a heavy hand smacks between his shoulder blades, sending him stuttering forward, ink flecking across his report.

"Wulf," he grumbles without looking up. He hadn’t noticed the opened window, nor the muggy, midday air nudging up against his back. He smooths the corner of his parchment down, grateful that it’s salvageable at the very least. He could probably still hand it in without reprimand and....

Eodwulf leans over his shoulder, his smugness a heavy cloud just ready to burst over Bren's head. "I hear you're the cat's meow, Brenny boy." 

Bren gasps, quill tearing through his parchment in the same moment that Eodwulf cuffs his ear. He yelps. "I'm going to KILL her." 

"No, you aren't!" 

"I'm going to kill _you_!"

"That _definitely_ seems more likely," Eodwulf snickers, dancing backward. Bren stares down at his ruined report, weighing his options. Wulf laughs from his perch on the windowsill and that is the proverbial final nail: “You know, this is what you get for feeding the strays in the square. You’ll have to court her with fish and rats.”

Bren slams his quill down and stands up, knocking his chair over. "Fuck it!” 

Reports can wait. Murdering his best friend cannot. He leaps through the open window after Wulf, their wordless shouts echoing across the courtyard and up into the humid, late-Spring sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Aladdin crouch, hand extended* Do you trust me?
> 
> Shoutout to Speil (theferalking), as always (!!), for helping me write the final part of this chapter. They've been essential in hammering out parts of this fic.
> 
> This is my first long fic and no amount of planning has prepared me for the sheer terror that accompanies the undertaking. I just want to do it right! Wish me luck!


	2. a spark away from fire

Today is a good day.

Today Bren doesn’t need to be carried through the archway from Master Ikithon’s laboratories. The doors that lead to and from his offices are a simple affair, made of oak stained such a warm, unassuming brown that it’s impossible to tell what goes on behind them from appearance alone. There is never any evidence left behind—all of them learned early how to wipe up their blood splatters from wood, tile, and stone with vinegar or soda ash before Master Ikithon taught them prestidigitation. 

Bren tugs at the cuffs of his shirtsleeves and takes a careful inhalation. Blood and ozone and cleaning solution mingle in his nostrils. He is stronger than his discomfort, he tells himself, but not strong enough, as it turns out, to hide his surprise at the sight of Nonagon lingering across the hall, hardly distinguishable from the shadows. Practice turns what would be a grimace of pain and surprise into a smile. 

"Hallo," he brings two fingers up in a lazy salute, masking his wince when his stitches pull. Nonagon is draped in a traveling cloak, its hood set artfully around his neck and held shut by a clasp in the shape of an eye. "Fancy seeing you here. Master Ikithon is finishing up if you’ve come to see him."

"Can’t fathom why _else_ I’d be here," Nonagon returns with a smirk. “But if he’s preoccupied this is less fancy and more fate _,_ wouldn’t you say?"

Bren gets the distinct impression that he means to share a secret with him and he resists the urge to wrinkle his brow in confusion. His head has been so full of fate recently, with Astrid and Wulf, with finals, with _Lucien._ Maybe she’s made Nonagon aware of their situation, warned him that they are, for better or worse, bound by a power much larger than the two of them.

…But Bren isn’t in Nonagon’s head, nor is Nonagon in his.

His smile returns, bright and well-practiced. "Fate, huh?" 

"All those fairy tales in the library and you don't believe?”

“Fairy tales are just that,” he murmurs. 

“Some truth in stories, I heard. Clever human told me that,” Nonagon ripostes. Bren huffs the echo of a laugh, head cocking in a way that chases a lock of hair to fall just shy of his eyes. Nonagon’s crescent moon. He swears they go bright as cherries beneath the thin light, but the amusement is quick to slough away.

"You're pale," he points out suddenly. "Are you well?"

He isn’t prepared for concern. He thought—when he’d spared a thought to Nonagon, which wasn’t often—he would be better equipped to speak with him after their time in the library. Bren’s smile flickers with a cocktail of wariness and exhaustion, the magic under his skin surging and ebbing like the tide. He decides it must simply be Nonagon’s nature, what with his insatiable nosiness.

"I'm always pale," he says. He leans in while hooking his fingers loosely together behind his back. "Well, not _always_. In the summer I often turn pink."

The deflection works. Nonagon mimics Bren’s stance and sways forward, “Quite a feat of magic, that. I only ever go from purple to darker purple.”

“ _No?_ ” He draws out, thick with sarcasm. “I thought you would turn green.” 

Nonagon studies him with a smirk. “That mouth's going to get you into trouble one day.”

It’s somewhere between a threat and a promise, plucked from the future by a seer and Bren is tempted to say he feels it already has. He doesn’t, and Nonagon inevitably straightens with a curl of his tail. That he notices the sudden distance at all is alarming, makes his ankles feel wobbly. He _has_ lost a lot of blood today. 

“How're my translations coming?”

“They are in process. I’ve been a little busier than I thought I’d be.”

“No worry. Me and mine are going on a little jaunt across Wildemount. You have plenty of time." 

Questions clamor behind his teeth. How many _people_ does he have, and for _what_ —their meeting had been vague at best—but the presence of Master Ikithon with just a thin door to separate them sends goose flesh down his neck. There are better ways to get answers that don't involve gossiping in the halls. “Ah. I think I should have it done by then.”

“Perfect,” Nonagon pushes off the wall. “I'm in your pocket. I'll have to figure out a way to repay you.”

Bren’s curiosity gets the better of him. “When will you return?”

Nonagon's smile twitches. 

“Two weeks, give or take. Three, if we're thorough, which we always are.” He flicks a hand, expression nearly unchanged, “Not nearly enough time to miss me.”

Bren blinks.

_To miss me._

So Nonagon _is_ flirting with him. The confirmation sends a little thrill racing through his body. What would his expression be if Bren rucked up his sleeve only to find his pretty little cat’s name scrawled across his arm? 

It’s just a thought. He's only cruel when the situation necessitates. 

He’ll ask for Lucien upon their return, then show her the name whether or not he’s even willing. Three weeks is ample enough time to work up his nerves, and three weeks without seeing his soulmate will no doubt work in his favor. The bards always sing about the power of absence.

“Three weeks then,” he nods and strolls past the tiefling, bold enough to clasp a hand against his shoulder as he passes. “Good luck.”

He freezes when Nonagon catches his hand. His fingers are rough with callouses, sun-warmed despite the overcast day and the preternatural draft that haunts the halls of the academy. Soft lips touch Bren’s fingers, eyes sparkling above the hills and valleys of his scarred knuckles.

"Two with your blessing, I'll bet," Nonagon murmurs, breath warm against his skin. He’s released as quickly as he’d been caught, eyes a fraction too wide to be anything but stunned.

To Bren’s credit his smirk doesn't falter, discipline steeling him while his pulse runs erratic in his ears. His laugh trembles as he turns away, hand in the air as he goes. "We'll see." 

*

The mountains to the north are untouched by spring. Here, the ground is frozen beneath piles of snow that gleams dangerously, like a dagger tilted to catch the light. The cold chafes against Bren’s uncovered cheeks, slapping them rash red and dry as he lingers at the mouth of the limestone cave they’ve fashioned into a makeshift interrogation chamber. He tugs his furs and squints into the biting light, taking in the tracks cutting dizzying patterns in the snow. 

“Hope he doesn’t get too far,” Wulf grunts, coming up behind Bren and shading his eyes. His brow is heavy, lips chapped by the wind. “I don’t want to tramp through all that just to bring him back.”

“He won’t get far,” Bren asserts softly. They had stripped him naked, burned his clothes, kept him soaked to the bone. He would not make it off the mountain, let alone across another snow drift. “We’ll have to cover his prints.”

“Not at all,” Astrid calls. Deeper in the cave, she picks through the effects they hadn’t destroyed. The water she’d summoned, the water that splashed against the walls, has already frozen in the thinnest sheets of ice. It catches in her hair. “There’s supposed to be a snowstorm tonight.” 

“I hope Master Ikithon doesn’t leave us out here,” Wulf says. Bren watches distractedly as he rubs his bare hands together, blows into them. Blood is black beneath his nails. Bren allows his own to catch fire, rolling flame from finger to finger, across his palms, before he snuffs it out. He takes Wulf’s hands and helps rub warmth into them again. It earns a mumbled thanks.

“He’d better not.” Astrid neatens her collection. “Bren, will you take a look at this?” 

“Of course.” He releases Wulf’s hands and claps his bicep on his way back into the cave. “Did you find something?”

“Think so,” she says, holding up a sheet of creased paper. “You’re faster at this than I am. Can you?”

Bren nods and takes a seat beside her on her makeshift pallet. The conspirator hadn’t had anything magical on his person from what he could tell, despite Bren’s assurance. He hadn’t been forthcoming during the initial interrogation, which could mean that training must’ve been improving. Good for them. It’s an idle thought as he reads over the note, decoding it in so many flickers of his eyes. The thing about many of these movements is that they aren’t as clever as they believe themselves to be.

“Insurrection planned in Berleben,” he says after a beat. 

Astrid scoffs. “Imagine dissenters in Berleben. What’ve they got? Slingshots?” 

Bren folds the paper and sets it alight. He claps the ashes from his palms. Master Ikithon won’t want to rope his superiors into quashing a revolt helmed by pitchfork wielding swamp-dwellers. A small unit of Crownsguard could put an end to it in a matter of hours.

“Bold of him to carry anything that would mark himself.”

“People believe themselves invincible when they think they’re safe,” he says, well-tread words from their teacher.

“Idolatrous hicks,” Astrid hisses, using Bren’s brief flame to steal a moment of warmth. She leans around him, her full cheeks drawn severely in her annoyance. “Wulf! Go grab him.”

He’s already pulling on his gloves, his furred cap down over his ears. He salutes them and goes bounding into the furrows carved out into the snow, his breath trailing crisp and white behind him. 

“He should have a barrel of brandy around his neck,” Bren says. Astrid smacks him on the arm.

“That’s my soulmate you’re talking about!”

“Your soulmate is a mountain dog.”

“And yours is a cat. Literally.”

_Not nearly enough time to miss me._

Bren hums noncommittally. 

He hasn’t thought of Lucien much since Master Ikithon brought them here. Or much at all since Nonagon and his Tomb Takers departed. After his run-in with the tiefling in the halls, he’d squirreled away in his room - to recover, he told Astrid and Wulf as they passed one another in the dormitories - only to spread his books across his bed and translate Zemnian to Common for a person he owed nothing. He couldn’t help but wonder about that, about this compulsion to transcribe whole stories complete with additional marginalia (not out of kindness, but because he could hear Nonagon’s questions). It wasn’t an arduous task, nor a long one. It was nice, and he found his mind unspooling after days with Master Ikithon in the labs. 

He wonders where Nonagon is right this very moment. He absently brings his knuckles to his lips, breath warm across them. 

Perhaps Lucien is by his side, he forces himself to imagine, while Nonagon holds his swords aloft. He hasn’t seen much sword fighting, but he’s read about it plenty: the thunderous clash of broadswords and the sparks that fly at their joining, the snarl of a rapier as it pricks and stabs. But two curved, dangerous blades? Nonagon must look a sight with his arms spread, like a bird of prey, swords singing through the air, mouth a determined line— _no_ , teeth bared in a grin— 

He wrests his thoughts away from Nonagon, veers them haphazardly back to Lucien. There’s a crunch of footsteps at the mouth of the cave and he’s jettisoned from his fanciful musings, much to his relief. 

Wulf ferries the half-frozen traitor across his shoulders and from where Bren stands, he can see that his bare feet are nearly black, skin a mottled, unfamiliar purple, the rest splotched red. This is a leader of an uprising, Bren thinks disbelievingly, this man with his hair hanging in frozen chunks, pupils wide as Dwendalian coins. Will they be made to do this to the Tomb Takers after Master Ikithon is finished with them? Surely the group of them are heretics, given their nature. It makes Bren feel unsteady, but he writes off the tingling in his fingers as the cold and digs them into the fur above his elbows. 

“He isn’t too far gone, is he?” Bren asks to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth as Wulf unloads the man carelessly across the unyielding ground. He helps Astrid to her feet.

Wulf nudges the conspirator with his boot. There is something like a groan, but not much more. “Enough to fight. We’re fine.” 

“I’m sure he’s got a bit more information in him. Could you roll him over, Wulf?” Astrid asks. She glances at Bren. “Ready?”

He always is. “Of course,” he says.

And so they continue. 

Master Ikithon does not come for them that night. They get little more from the prisoner save a panoply of pleas and a slurred confessional stating the location of their headquarters in some mealy part of their swamp town. He goes catatonic not long after the admission. Astrid and Wulf and Bren are all of them hungry and tired and impatient and cold, and so they unanimously decide that he isn’t worth bringing back for further interrogation.

It’s not difficult to get rid of a body—Bren learned this very early in his studies. With the right components to flint, fire will surge from his hands, glutted on murmured arcana and the memory of power welling beneath perforations in his skin that have barely sutured together. A man can be made ash in an instant. They stand at the mouth of the cave and watch the wind take him away while they split their meager rations, speaking of nothing well into the night. 

_Are you ready for graduation?_

_Had a good laugh with Master Ikithon about biting through a leather strap the last round of experiments. Least I have good teeth, he says._

_Take me dancing when we’re back._

_Cats are very warm, a shame your Lucien isn’t here._

“I’ll keep watch,” Bren tells Astrid and Wulf eventually, when they're certain Master Ikithon has left them there for the night. They’ve been curled into one another for much of the evening, folded into their furs so thoroughly Bren has a difficult time distinguishing where Astrid ends and Wulf begins. It’s not that they hadn’t invited him. They had, but dynamics have changed within their group and he’s more outsider than he was before. He knows they’re happier without him pressed against them to sap their heat. Bren nurtures a flame in between his frigid palms and moves near to the mouth of the cave.

Out here, night is absolute. Save for the ripples of sight his tiny fire gives him (casting an orange glow across the ice and gravel strewn ground), he can’t see too far in front of him. Lucien probably could, with her feline vision. Nonagon, too, with his fiendish eyes. 

The wind whistles and calls in tumultuous pendulum swings outside. He focuses his listening well as he can on that, and not what's happening at his back, deeper inside the cave. He can hear the soft shuffling of two bodies pressed tight, catch the little pleasured noises of quick breaths mingling together. They’re familiar enough sounds to coax a reflexive heat to suffuse his cheeks. He can’t blame his friends for seeking comfort after the exhausting day they’ve had, with the cold that sinks her claws through their layers. He doesn’t even want to be a part of it anymore and yet...Bren still wants, his desire meandering and insistent. 

In the dark his thoughts turn lavender, so he makes them black. Bren curls his legs near his chest, hides his little flame, and waits for the storm to subside.

*

Their training regimen intensifies and their extracurriculars balloon with fresh assignments, rendering thoughts of dancing moot, but the one thing that remains unchanged are their dinners with Master Ikithon.

Once a week they gather at his home, clustering together in his warm, vaulted dining room, to set the cutlery at the start and clear the table at the end. Here, they’re allowed to speak freely in Zemnian instead of Common as the halls of the Academy demands of them. It’s become, in its own way, a home away from home and luckily, while Master Ikithon is old fashioned, he’s not nearly so antiquated in his beliefs to have them cook the meals or wheel it out. He has people for that. 

It’s different from the dinners he had with his parents at the roughly hewn table his grandfather made as a wedding gift to them. The old thing is nicked and stained with age and use, her legs scratched to the hells by Frumpkin’s incessant need to keep his claws sharp. They were never so formal, nor did they ever have so much to eat. Meat was for special occasions, birthdays, or celebrations in the name of the Dawnfather, and Bren was always at his mother’s skirt, helping her prepare.

The first time he sat at Master Ikithon’s table, he hadn’t known which spoon to eat with, nor that slurping his soup, held to his mouth two-handed - _like a raccoon -_ was improper. He knows better now.

Tonight’s dinner is pleasant and lacking any traces of ozone or the faint sweetness of almonds. He cuts into his sausage and forks it into his mouth, pressing the spiced, juicy meat against his palate. He measures each bite to avoid bolting his food despite wanting to scarf it all down. He really should stop skipping lunch.

“It didn’t take nearly so long to get down the mountain as we thought it would,” Astrid says, still working on her broth. The light in the dining room is dim enough that the darkness beneath her eyes isn’t glaringly noticeable. 

“That is good to hear,” Master Ikithon says. He touches a napkin to each corner of his mouth every time he takes a bite of food. This, Bren counts, is his sixteenth time. “They’ve already bolstered their presence in Berleben. You did adequate work.”

Wulf serves himself a second helping of sausage, “Was it because of their proximity with Hupperdook, you think?”

“Doubt it,” Bren says without thinking. There was really no way a bunch of swamp dwellers would be able to ferry arms from a city built almost entirely for their development. “They’re no closer to Huppperdook than to Zadash. Further, with the mountains.”

Eodwulf is glowering at him when he looks up from his glass. Master Ikithon gives a toneless hum of acknowledgement and takes another bite, _dab dab_ , so he dares to respond with a small shrug. _He wasn’t even listening,_ it says. Wulf lays into his dumplings, and Astrid’s slippered foot connects harmlessly with his ankle. Bren winces and tucks his legs beneath his chair. The quiet that follows is a comfortable one.

“By the way, I spoke with Lady DeRogna since last we met. She has been doing some fieldwork near Felderwin,” Master Ikithon says eventually, much to Bren’s confusion. He hasn’t seen Lady DeRogna since their first tour of the restricted section of the armory. He looks to the others, but their gazes are fixed on their teacher with a bated anticipation that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand. “She heads back tomorrow, I’m afraid, but she is more than happy to take you on for a time, Astrid, Eodwulf. Be ready before noon tomorrow.”

They have never been split up before, yet when he glances askance at Astrid her hand lights upon Wulf’s on the table, much to his alarm.

“Master Ikithon?” Bren’s voice is respectfully neutral. “Am I going as well?”

“Ah,” he says as though remembering he is even _there._ It leaves a sour taste in his mouth. “No, no. You will be shadowing Master Tversky here at the Academy.”

Bren’s brow cleaves down the middle.

“Why?” he blurts before he can stop himself. Astrid’s silverware clinks against her plate. Master Ikithon is unperturbed. 

“I daresay you can learn a lot from her,” Master Ikithon returns, easily enough. Bren scrambles to figure out where he’s failed - what, about their last mission, had he flubbed? The interrogation? The disposal?

He’s ever been well and truly alone even once since arriving at the school. Even when their lessons are split apart, they all come together in the dorms at the end of it all to tend and nurse one another like a sorry flock of birds.

Master Ikithon continues, completely unaware of Bren’s tailspin, “Lady DeRogna has done more studying on soulbound marks than I’ve ever cared to, besides.”

The air rushes to Bren’s head so quickly he’s dizzy with it.

“Soulmate marks?” he breathes, like he doesn’t know. His cutlery is slippery in his grip.

_They told him._

“Me and Wulf, Bren!” Astrid’s gaze is steely, intense.

“Incredible, isn’t it? This is a boon for the Empire.”

Wulf is clutching Astrid’s hand, smiling that smile that is too subdued to be anything but a show of restraint. Her cheeks are rosy with delight.

”She wrote a paper early in her studies here, about the marks and their hidden potential,” Astrid titters. “It’s not her main track but _apparently_ it’s an interest of hers! Wulf and I - we can really benefit. Isn’t it amazing?”

They told him and didn’t let Bren know. 

“How lucky,” Bren says meekly. 

Sweat prickles in his armpits and at the small of his back. He skewers a dumpling and tastes nothing in the bite. He knows he should pretend to be more curious, ask to see their marks, but instead he counts— _one, two, three, four….—_ his heartbeat in his ears. They told Master Ikithon. Did they tell him about his mark, about Lucien? Red eyes, then yellow.

_Five, six, seven, eight._

Does it even matter, when they’re no longer a trio?

There is more to their dinner conversation, but Bren doesn’t hear anything beyond their latest assignments and the mechanical buzz of his own responses. He is nearly to two thousand by the time they’re all excused.

“What else did you tell him?!”

Bren’s anger is palpable, fills the dormitory like coils of smoke. Eodwulf’s jaw works but Bren holds up a trembling hand, only to curl his fingers into his palm to hide the way they shake. Astrid’s cheeks are patchy with color. 

“Nothing!” she hisses with offense. “Why would you think I told him anything about you?!”

He reels back as if slapped.

“Astrid,” Wulf says sharply. He wraps a hand around her elbow, and her shoulders decompress, but her mouth is still a tight, colorless line. He glances at Bren and the edge in his gaze blunts into helplessness. “We thought it would be better this way.”

“ _Why?_ ”

 _Because they’re jealous of you, Bren,_ a bygone memory of Master Ikithon’s voice whispers. _You’ve grasped concepts those two haven’t even begun to understand—_

“To keep you _safe,_ ” Astrid snaps in righteous anger, bullying their teacher out of his head. “Do you know how much _trouble_ you’d be in if he found out about your- your _cat?_ ”

“All I _do_ is think _,_ Astrid,” Bren whispers. “Of _course_ I know. You could’ve told me what you were planning _._ ”

Wulf shakes his head, silencing Astrid with a squeeze of his hand. “We couldn’t. We talked about it—”

“— _Obviously._ ”

“ _Bren,_ ” Wulf pleads. “You knew, and you know how he is about secrets. We couldn’t risk getting you in trouble, too.”

“We thought,” Astrid continues, frustration still curling the edges of her tone. Her hands are so small, and she holds them cupped to her mouth, her nose, as if in prayer. “That if it was a surprise to you - and we knew it _would_ be, hearing it like that - that…that it’d be more believable. For _him_.” 

The tightness in his chest eases, but barely. His mouth is still bone dry, so Bren wets his lips. “How could you have known he would’ve brought it up?”

It’s childish. He knows, the moment it springs from his mouth the reason why. His hands are cold and clammy despite the boiling frustration roiling the pit of his stomach.

“Because…even Master Ikithon is predictable at times.”

And it’s _true,_ isn’t it? That even when Bren swears he will never fall for the way their teacher sets them up and pits them against one another, that he still takes the bait. None of them are so ignorant that they don’t see it - if they were, they wouldn’t be here at the Academy. Knowing this does little to assuage the hurt.

“Bren.” It’s Wulf, soft and uncertain in the face of his discomfort.

“You got the short end of the stick,” Astrid says. “We wanted to keep you safe.”

Bren’s vision is still hyper sharp with nerves. Astrid’s room is more alien to him now than it’s ever been before — there are her bed slippers, and Wulf’s coat hangs upon a wall hook. When was the last time he was even in here, he wonders. When he told her about Lucien, all washed in hot and cold anxiety? He scratches his arms, the insides of his elbows, and folds them defensively across his middle, gaze too heavy to look anywhere but at their feet.

He suddenly, bitterly, _inexplicably_ wishes Lucien were there, and feels the absence like a cavernous hole splitting from sternum to belly. He barely knows her, and yet he still aches.

_For a firm, calloused hand grasping his. For lips on his fingers, and the weight of significance in red eyes—_

“At least now the attention is off of you. If only for a little while.”

Bren squeezes his eyes shut. “Ya,” he whispers hoarsely. “Ya, of course.”

It’s only later, when he’s in bed, that he realizes neither of them had actually said _I’m sorry,_ and wonders well into the morning with a churning stomach and a head that won’t shut up, if the situation warranted an apology at all.

*

The warmth of morning creeps into his room, sunlight pressing her face against the curtains until Bren can no longer feign sleep. The bed creaks as he turns onto his back, eyes dry and tight. He feels more tired now than he did the night before, but despite this exhaustion his mind is already up and whirring; there’s no going back to sleep.

The knot in his chest remains as a vestige of the night before and it makes taking a deep breath impossible. They did it for him, he reminds himself while pressing the backs of his hands to his eyes. Because he got the short end of the stick, as Astrid put it.

Is it selfish, he wonders, not to feel grateful for that until he _forces_ himself to feel gratitude?

_Why would you think I told him anything about you?!_

Bren rolls onto his side and stares at his study desk beneath the window, stacked tall with an array of books and messy with papers. He should get up to move them before they face any sun damage, do a bit of research in the library for his short internship with Master Tversky. Thinking about dysology is a decent enough distraction from the thoughts that prick, but when he shifts with the intent to get out of bed he only manages to pull his knees up instead.

 _Arcane constructs_ , he thinks. _And strange creatures from outside the Empire,_ and _Astrid and Wulf will be gone to Felderwin in just a couple of hours_.

Maybe he’ll stay in bed until then.

By the time he gets up for breakfast, the dining hall is awhirl with the gray uniforms of the Academy staff, clearing out platters of eggs and silver-gilt tureens of oat porridge from the banquet tables. The smell triggers the gnawing ache in his stomach, though he can’t discern between his present anxiety or hunger; he’s not even sure his appetite is present. Bren doesn’t let that stop him from wandering to the nearest, mostly untouched table to grab more sausage and rolls of bread than he’s capable of eating, smiling guiltily at a matronly staff member that bustles by with a cart laden with used utensils. She pauses as he finishes tying his napkin off like a bindle and wordlessly pours him tea in a steaming ceramic mug before pushing it across the table at him with a wink.

He must look sad as a stray.

“Thank you,” he murmurs.

“Make sure you return everything by next mealtime, young man. Can’t even begin to tell you how much dishware’s gone missing!”

“I will,” he promises, knowing he won’t, and gathers his pillage.

Wulf is hovering outside his door when he turns the corner into the wing of the dorms, his face bowed near to the doorframe in that goofy way he does when he’s seeking forgiveness. Bren slows, surprised that the typical affection it inspires is simply…absent. Instead, he’s a little annoyed.

“Yes?” Bren barely lifts his voice, eating the distance between them in several strides. Wulf glances up with a quick, uncommonly nervous smile.

“You weren’t at breakfast.”

“I was working,” he utters, sliding in between his friend and his door.

“Right,” Wulf says, stepping back. He scratches at his shoulder before giving it a rub. “Of course. Well, we’re leaving soon.”

“Okay,” is all he manages in return.

He drops his gaze to Wulf’s heavy boots, the ones he only ever wears out when they travel. They’re nice and well-made, haven’t needed a cobbler since he bought them ages ago—the last time they all visited Blumenthal to see their parents, if he remembers correctly. And he always does.

The silence is unbearable.

“I wanted to see you before we went off,” Wulf admits. “To make sure you were okay.”

He almost says _why wouldn’t I be?_ and _thank you_ and _where’s Astrid?_ but he doesn’t, hand clenching around the knot of his food bindle.

“She’s still upset,” Wulf continues, as if hearing his thoughts, as if Bren doesn’t know how she gets. “That you were mad. We really want to keep you safe.”

“I know,” he manages with some irritation, fatigued again. He just wants to eat, to have his tea, and go hunting for whatever papers Master Tversky has written in her field. He wants to be _alone_ now that the opportunity is there _,_ but Wulf lingers, insistent as a bruise.

“And I wanted to tell you that.” Wulf lowers his voice, “That he’s meeting with them. Again.”

Bren’s heart pings in his chest. He glances up, ears reddening. “Tonight?”

Wulf’s arms cross casually across his chest, hands curving against the inside of his elbows. He seems pleased with this turn, and Bren wonders if this is an olive branch of sorts. Information carries more weight than apologies in the halls of their school, after all.

“Same time and place.”

Bren swallows around the odd tightness in his throat, breath coiling between his ribs. When he inhales, it’s like he can take a full breath again. He gets to talk to Lucien tonight, _has_ to, if they’re to progress past being acquaintances.

“Thank you,” he murmurs earnestly. Wulf gently cuffs his bicep, his touch lingering.

“Of course.” He squeezes his arm and releases him, “Anyway, I gotta go. Take care of yourself. Especially with Master Tversky, I’ve heard she’s a little nutty.”

Bren hums a note of stale amusement. “And Wulf?”

“Ya, Bren?”

“Pass auf dich auf.”

He looks warmer, happier, and Bren can live with that in this moment.

“Wir sehen uns,” Wulf grins and waves at him with a wide, calloused hand, disappearing down the hall at a lope. 

And suddenly he’s gone from one issue to another, just like that. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, as his mother would say. His door quietly clicks shut behind him. His room is no longer its usual sanctuary as he forces down rolls and sausages he barely tastes and washes them down with lukewarm tea. He tries pacing the energy eddying through his body away and when that doesn’t work he sits at his desk to sort through his books. The anxious excitement is suffocating, though, and he eventually gathers some of his things and heads to the library.

Dysology is no longer an adequate distraction. From his spot in the stacks he can spy the low shelves housing villager accounts and folktales, can recall the hills and dips of their leathery spines. He tears his eyes away and buries his attention back in the book opened and perched against his middle, retreading the sentence he’d read not but a moment’s prior. A dark shape passes in his periphery and he stiffens with a sharp glance up.

It’s only another student, milling about down the aisle. Bren abandons all pretense of _not_ being distracted and moves to the shelves he’d browsed with Nonagon. If he can’t focus on dysology, he can at least do a bit more research for his soulmate’s compatriot in a show of…what? Solidarity? Bren doesn’t dwell on the why as he carries several books to the same table he’d sat at with the tiefling and sits in the same chair he’d occupied.

What will he say to Lucien? Bren cracks open a book on the narrative significance of petroglyphs to the north. Will they have anything in common? He flips to the woodcuts and carefully drawn diagrams in the middle. Will she even _want_ to pursue their connection, and can a soulmate mark even be _denied?_ That question makes his stomach turn sour—it would be his luck, to lose his friends and soulmate in one go. The thought is dour, even for him, so Bren avoids it and begins putting ink to parchment, the furrow cleaving his brows becoming more and more severe the more he writes. Time flies after that.

The closer the meeting draws, the more his nerves wind up. He dumps his new books and writing carelessly across his bed as evening bleeds into night, skipping dinner in mental preparation. He’ll puke otherwise.

 _Lucien,_ he practices as he takes the steps two-by-two down to the first floor. _I am Bren. Your soulmate._

He doesn’t look at the guard stationed at the front door as he passes by. Outside, the night air is crisp, the clouds shuttling across the velvet-soft sky and the smell of nature is a nice change from vellum and old, worn carpets. He imagines Lucien standing at Nonagon’s shoulder in the library as they speak with his teacher, straight-backed and severe. He can only just recall the way she stands, stiff and ever watchful. Does she speak during their meetings? Does she hunt, like Nonagon? He doesn’t remember a weapon at her hip or strapped across her back.

Grass crunches underfoot, scent sickeningly sweet. It’s easier to picture Nonagon in his careless sprawl, his tail yo-yoing in and out. Easier to see the way his cheek rests in his palm, pinky playing errantly across his lower lip as he absorbs Master Ikithon’s directions.

Bren pauses beneath a gnarled old tree and folds his arms, nails digging into the fabric at his elbows. He is hot and cold and his cheeks won’t stop _burning._ Time slips by him in his anxiety, and he’s so wound up he nearly misses Lucien and her ilk as they crunch by on the gravel drive were it not for the ribbon-flash of Nonagon’s tail beneath the flutter of his cloak. Bren freezes up, limbs locking at his sides.

 _It’s now or never._ He unsticks his tongue from the roof of his mouth.

“Lucien!”

He’s lucky his voice doesn’t crack. The trio turns as a single unit and Bren’s heart thumps so hard it sends ripples of feeling through his body. _This is it,_ he thinks. _Ready or not._ He disguises wiping his damp palms with a perfunctory tugging-down of his coat.

“There you are!” Nonagon smiles as he approaches. He’s the only one who regards him with a light, loose warmth and his stomach pitches with the attention. Bren licks his lips, pictures a four-sided box to manifest calm. _Just remember your training,_ he tells himself, as if he could ever forget. “Was wondering where you and your friends were at. My translations?”

“I don’t have them.” Bren says shortly. His gaze flits from Nonagon, to Otis, to Lucien and all the way back again. “I was hoping to speak to Lucien. Alone.”

Her furry brow pinches enough to catch the shivering lamplight. She glances at Nonagon with a prick of her ears, shoulders lifting and falling. Her tail, he’s noticed, is still and low.

“Sure,” she says after a silent exchange. Bren’s heart is somewhere in his stomach. She clasps Nonagon’s bicep. “Fine. I will see you at the gate. Otis?”

“Don’t linger. You know how they get,” Otis murmurs.

“You know how they get with _us,_ ” Nonagon corrects with a cocked grin, gesturing between he and Lucien. Otis grunts and with a cursory glance Bren’s way, peels off. After a final, weighted glance between the remaining two, Lucien, to his blossoming horror, follows suit.

His pulse is a war drum in his ears as the night swallows them whole. “Wait—where is she going—Lucien?” He whips towards Nonagon, who is as still and relaxed as he’s ever seen him.

“Yes?” His tail is a slow pendulum, to and fro.

“I wanted to speak to Lucien, alone,” Bren snaps, drawing his shoulders back.

It’s a smooth tilt of Nonagon’s head that reminds Bren, all too suddenly, that he is a hunter. The wan light hardly strokes the angles of his face. “You are.”

Bren’s heart grinds to a halt. His thoughts go milk-white. 

“You’re Nonagon.”

“ _The_ Nonagon,” the other offers with a hint of teeth. Bren is lightheaded. “It’s a title.”

“Your name.”

That frustratingly pleasant voice is thick with burgeoning amusement. “You never asked it.”

“This whole time….”

“To be fair, I assumed you knew.”

_Otis, Lucien, Nonagon…_

For the first time in years, Bren gapes.

“You’re Lucien,” he manages stupidly. That’s the ripcord that finally sends color flooding through his neck, his cheeks, his ears.

Those red eyes crinkle. “You’re Bren.”

“Then who is.” He pauses and swallows the impulse to stammer, “Your tabaxi friend?”

Nonagon, _the_ Nonagon— _no, Lucien—_ has the gall to show all of his teeth. “Her name is Cree. Bren…did you think she was your soulmate?”

And it’s _that_ word that does it. That word and Lucien’s uproarious laughter that causes Bren’s hands to fly to his beet-red face. He wants the ground to open up and swallow him whole. He knows there’s a spell for it, he’s _read_ it, has it copied down somewhere in one of his books. A pinch of red clay and he would be entombed.

Warm hands grasp his wrists. Bren flinches, but the grip is steadfast.

“You didn’t feel it? This whole time?” Lucien asks softly. Traces of his laughter linger like smoke in his voice.

 _It’s like a string,_ Astrid had said, and he remembers the pull of his attention when Lucien first stepped into his line of sight. How startled he felt when their gazes met. How his thoughts always seemed to careen towards him like a compass needle aimed at true north, even when Bren forced himself to focus on schoolwork, on Cree, on anything but those red eyes and that self-satisfied smile. Even now, he’s hyperaware of how warm his hands are, how he can feel his heartbeat in their points of contact. Bren’s fingers part, cheeks still throbbing with heat against his palms.

“I did,” he admits from behind his hands. Lucien coaxes his hands away from his face, but he stares at his collarbone and begins counting his scars.

“So you ignored it.”

“No.” Bren says quickly. He even _almost_ looks up. “Your names confused me. I thought…process of elimination meant. Well.”

Lucien huffs, thumbs petting his wrists. “Are you disappointed?”

“Relieved, actually. I. Mmh. I got the feeling that Cree hated me.”

Lucien snorts and something about its gracelessness inspires a faint smile. “I wouldn’t say hate. Annoyed, more like. But that’s my doing. Couldn’t stop singing your praises.” When Bren finally looks up, Lucien’s gaze strikes his chest so hard he feels winded. “She hates my singing.”

If there’s a breeze, Bren can’t feel it. His blush continues like a wildfire in dry brush, warming him down to his toes. Lucien’s hands slip from around his wrists to take his hands, and he knows with a sudden certainty that it isn’t a chord he feels between them, but a magnet drawing them together, keeping his eyes open and curling his fingers and parting his lips. There’s a cheeky certainty to the tilt of Lucien’s mouth, like he knew all of the answers to the questions he’d asked, but rather than annoy him, it’s a balm on Bren’s heart. His anxiety turns past tense. This feels good. It feels right.

A thump against his boot startles him enough to pull his hands loose.

“Tail,” Lucien allays, reaching for him again, but Bren folds his arms behind his back. The Academy looms as cold and imposing as his teacher at his back.

“We can’t. Not here,” he murmurs, apologetic.

That sinuous tail cuts through the air before it disappears beneath the edge of Lucien’s dark cloak. Bren has a sneaking suspicion that it isn’t unlike Frumpkin’s when he’s annoyed.

“We’ll be back tomorrow night.”

Bren studies him from beneath his lashes, the way Lucien rotates his wrists, how he holds himself before he crosses his arms. Like a petulant child. “I’ll give you the translations tomorrow, then.”

It’s enough for his long ears to twitch, and he catalogs that movement as well.

“So you’ll be at this meeting?”

Bren blanches. It isn’t even affected. “No. But”—he pauses and glances up, sees a chance and leaps at it—“my room is in the western wing. You can see it from the courtyard.”

Lucien is so quiet that Bren remembers the wind, hears how it brings the sound of movement across the grass to remind them that they’re not alone. That tail, though. It gives him away with a swish. Even the fear of being caught is nothing in the face of a dare.

After a studious silence, his soulmate asks: “How do you expect me to find it?”

Bren bites his lip and thinks of all the books Astrid and Wulf call him silly for reading. “I’ll leave a lantern on the sill.”

“Aren’t there guards?” But his smile is crooked and wild.

“I’m sure you can find a way, Lucien,” he teases, words taut with nervous thrill. He must’ve said something right. Those red eyes gleam, that tail sways, and Bren feels the pull, undeniable and insistent even as he takes one step back, and then another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What can I say except depression?


End file.
